An intriguing premise, effective voice, and entertaining writing make for a winning tale about two musicians.
In this YA novel, a paralyzed, mute teenager gets a new roommate, an elderly jazz performer, who can hear his thoughts—and take him back in time.
It’s 1987, and Aaron Greenberg, 14, has been imprisoned for life by his own body. Once he was an active boy who played the trombone, but two years ago, he contracted a rare form of cryptococcal meningitis that left him paralyzed and, supposedly, brain-dead. Ever since, he’s lived in a nursing home, unable to communicate but fully cognizant. Aaron passes the time by entering his “mind palace”: not the memory technique but an imagined castle with fabulous rooms to explore. Then Aaron meets his new roommate, the elderly Solomon Felsher, who suffers from some dementia but was once a famous jazz musician, playing his saxophone with all the greats. He can hear Aaron’s thoughts—and occasionally, Solomon somehow pulls Aaron into reliving important episodes from the saxophonist’s past, in which the boy finds himself providing crucial help. For example, Aaron saves the day when he plays trombone during Solomon’s first Chicago gig. Solomon also has a pretty, kind 14-year-old granddaughter, Sarah, who learns the secret of his communication with Aaron. Convincing his doctor takes some doing, but over the next two years, with Sarah’s support, Aaron slowly recovers. In the real world, he’ll need all his new strength to help his friend Solomon one last time. Twiss (I AM SLEEPLESS: Sim 299, 2015, etc.) offers a captivating double premise with his story of a locked-in boy and time travel via dementia. The author skillfully weaves these threads together with another double story about Aaron’s and Solomon’s progress, one toward health, the other toward acceptance. Not only that, Twiss handles Solomon’s Yiddish-inflected voice and Aaron’s teenage sensibility nicely, develops the youthful romance sweetly, and provides exciting scenes of danger, daring, and escape. (One quibble: Aaron’s last name is sometimes spelled “Greenburg” in the text.) This warmhearted novel focuses on how people make connections and help each other through the most trying circumstances with good humor, music, and affection.
An intriguing premise, effective voice, and entertaining writing make for a winning tale about two musicians.Pub Date: Dec. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5201-1052-3
Page Count: 278
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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